So many things wrong with this.

I am not a programmer by trade, and even though I learned programming in school, it’s not a thing I want to spend a lot of time doing, so I do use AI when I need to generate code.

But I have a few HARD rules.

1. I execute all code and commands. Nothing gets to run on my system without me.

2. Anything which can be even remotely destructive, must be flagged and not even shown to me, until I agree to the risk.

3. All information and commands must be verifiable by sourcing documentary links, or providing context links that I can peruse. If documentary evidence is not available, it must provide a rationale why I should execute what it generates.

4. Every command must be accompanied by a description of what the command will do, what each flag means, and what the expected outcome is.

5. I am the final authority on all matters. It is allowed to make suggestions, but never changes without my approval.

Without these constraints, I won’t trust it. Even then, I read all of the code it generates and verify it myself, so in the end, if it blows something up, I bear sole responsibility.

That is entirely a shit at managing memory problem.

If you have 1 MB of RAM left, firstly, your OS has not properly managed it’s resources. It should have reserved system RAM. Secondly, a good memory manager will have swapped out unused, or low priority pages.

And that’s not just a system issue. A well developed piece of software will unload (or never load) parts of the software that are not needed at runtime.

I’m going to give you a great example I just read about today, about bad programming practices. The install of Helldivers 2 has been reduced from 154GB to 23 GB. That’s a reduction of 85%. This was driven by de-duplication of code. So, while this is a storay about storage space, ask how many modules and functions were duplicated, and how many of those were loaded independently into RAM.

Bad programming in one area, means bad programming in all areas.

With your 1 MB example, I would ask if all of the devs who created all of the other programs on the system had written better and more efficient code, would you still need more RAM? The answer is no.

Because it wasn’t. After SP1, and moreso after SP2 it was perfectly fine.

This is my point.

Right, but that’s not a high memory problem, that’s a Windows is shit at managing memory problem.

If MS fixed that, you could easily run memory hot at >90% without issue.

It’s also a software developers are making poor products problem. Even back when I was on Windows, I swapped out MS Office for Libre Office and then OnlyOffice. In both cases, my system performed better just by not running MS Office. That’s not a memory usage problem.

On my work laptop. which runs Windows, I removed the entire Adobe suite, which I don’t use for anything, and my overall system responsiveness increased. Again, not a memory issue, an poor programming issue.

Devs (the companies, not the individual programmers) know that users will throw more RAM at a problem, so it absolves them of the need to write better code. If Windows had a better memory manager, and Office and Adobe were more efficient, you wouldn’t need more RAM.

Also, just to clarify a point. Right now, web browsers, the worst abuser of memory, are taking up 24GB of ram on my system.

Because I have no memory swapping issues, I keep many open web browsers, which most people can’t if they are on Windows because it’s crap at memory management.

So our list grows to, crappy memory management on Windows, crappy development of web browsers, crappy development of applications, and crappy web pages (as you say).

None of that is a low memory problem, it’s all poor software development. When RAM was super expensive, developers (again companies, not individuals) got lazy and stopped caring about efficiency.

We don’t need more RAM, we need better code. There is no reason anyone running normal usage should need that much RAM.

To make my point, I just SSHed into my wife’s Linux PC, which she never closes anything, and this is her memory usage with a bunch of browsers doing all the normal things she does, and multiple spreadsheets open in OnlyOffice.

Memory: Total: 16278284 Used: 6254884 Available: 10023400

Edit: BTW, I do understand your point. You can’t fix any of that. My point is we need to put blame where blame is due. And it’s not that memory is low.

Unpopular opinion here, but Windows Vista was perfectly fine after SP1 was released. I migrated from XP-64 Bit to Vista and all around, it worked just as well (after SP1).

The after SP1 thing is the important bit. Unfortunately, even though a lot of issues were fixed then, it already had it’s reputation as dogshit.

The other thing is, the NT6 kernel was really strong. MS needs to decouple their UI from the kernel. The Window 11 kernel is actually pretty good. It’s the diabolically awful Windows 11 Interface that is the source of so much Windows evil.

High memory usage isn’t a problem by itself. Empty RAM is not being used. How the system performs when something needs RAM is more important.

My system has 96GB of ram, 24 of which is dedicated to a Windows VM. Right now, I have only 3.5Gb free because of everything I’m running.

The important thing is, if I run a new task that requires more RAM, my system will cleanly reallocate the RAM to where it’s needed with no latency or performance hits, or stuttering.

In the meantime, it’s not sitting there, unused and useless.

When I had Windows on this same system, with less RAM, it performed worse when it needed to swap in RAM.